Packheiser Julian, Schmitz Judith, Pan Yaolu, El Basbasse Yasmin, Friedrich Patrick, Güntürkün Onur, Ocklenburg Sebastian
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Biopsychology, Department of Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
School of Medicine, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom.
Front Neurosci. 2020 Feb 14;14:109. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.00109. eCollection 2020.
The Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI) and the Waterloo Footedness Questionnaire (WFQ) are two of the most widely used questionnaires to assess lateralized everyday behavior in human participants. However, it is unclear to what extent the specific behavior assessed in these questionnaires elicit lateralized neural activity when performed in real-life situations. To illuminate this unresolved issue, we assessed EEG alpha and beta asymmetries during real-life performance of the behaviors assessed in the EHI and WFQ using a mobile EEG system. This methodology provides high ecological validity for studying neural correlates of motor behavior under more naturalistic conditions. Our results indicate that behavioral performance of items of both the EHI and WFQ differentiate between left- and right-handers and left- and right-footers on the neural level, especially in the alpha frequency band. These results were unaffected by movement parameters. Furthermore, we could demonstrate that neural activity elicited specifically during left-sided task performance provides predictive power for the EHI or WFQ score of the participants. Overall, our results show that these prominent questionnaires not only distinguish between different motor preferences on the behavioral level, but also on the neurophysiological level. Furthermore, we could show that mobile EEG systems are a powerful tool to investigate motor asymmetries in ecologically valid situations outside of the laboratory setting. Future research should focus on other lateralized behavioral phenotypes in real-life settings to provide more insights into lateralized motor functions.
爱丁堡利手问卷（EHI）和滑铁卢利足问卷（WFQ）是评估人类参与者日常行为偏侧化最常用的两份问卷。然而，尚不清楚这些问卷所评估的特定行为在现实生活中执行时会在多大程度上引发神经活动的偏侧化。为了阐明这个未解决的问题，我们使用移动脑电图系统，在现实生活中执行EHI和WFQ所评估行为的过程中，评估脑电图的α波和β波不对称性。这种方法为在更自然的条件下研究运动行为的神经相关性提供了较高的生态效度。我们的结果表明，EHI和WFQ项目的行为表现，在神经层面上能够区分左利手与右利手、左利足与右利足，尤其是在α频段。这些结果不受运动参数的影响。此外，我们能够证明，在左侧任务执行过程中特别引发的神经活动，能够为参与者的EHI或WFQ得分提供预测力。总体而言，我们的结果表明，这些著名的问卷不仅在行为层面，而且在神经生理层面都能区分不同的运动偏好。此外，我们能够证明，移动脑电图系统是在实验室环境之外的生态有效情境中研究运动不对称性的有力工具。未来的研究应聚焦于现实生活环境中的其他行为偏侧化表型，以便更深入地了解运动功能的偏侧化。
